Saturday, July 5, 2014

Golden Snails and Jumping Spiders

Aloha dear reader,

It is my pleasure to share with you, some of the iPhone macro photos I took yesterday in my own backyard. I was looking around for something to photograph and there seemed precious little, perhaps it's because the winter chill is now feeling more bitterly cold than it has in past days.

I noticed a leafhopper and took a few shots, they are beautiful but hard to capture, so that didn't work out, then I noticed these little tiny snail shells, no more than 2mm in size, they were all over our fence, but each time my clumsy fingers tried to grip one, it would fall and I lost 5 of these in total. I nearly lost this one, because I breathed too closely near it and it flew off the bench I was using, yes, that's how tiny these little things are, and I don't know why they aren't surviving. Perhaps the ants get to them, I'm not sure...but they do make for a lovely photo, with their translucence letting the light come through their pretty shells, giving them golden tones.

I then was on my way inside, when out of the corner of my eye I noticed a jumping spider, and a big one compared to some I've seen, he must have been around 3mm, just perfect for the 10x Olloclip macro lens to capture, now, I thought, if only I can get a few shots. Trouble was, he was wedged in a hedge and I didn't like my chances, so I used a stick initially, but he didn't want to jump onto it, so I ever so gently plucked the leaf he sat on, and then we had our little photo shoot, possibly 200 photos were taken to get just three optimal shots, but I was really glad for time spent with this cutie. I just adore these little fellows. They display a defensive behaviour when you follow them, and that is jumping right on you or at you. In my case, they seem to like to jump either on my hand, up my sleeve or directly onto the lens itself. You need a fair bit of patience to capture them, unless you are lucky enough to come across one that is in a perfect position already with the light just right, it can be a little bit tricky. They move a lot, and often around in circles. You learn to predict their movements so you can get into position beforehand, but still, it's tricky and can be frustrating.

I took these with the Camera+ app for iPhone and edits were done in various apps. The first two images were edited in Snapseed, going for the black and white with a red filter applied. The bottom three images were edited in Filterstorm. and the final image you see here, was edited in a combination of Filterstorm and Stackables.

Thank you for visiting my blog today and reading my post, viewing my photography, I appreciate it very much, please don't hesitate to share this post on your favourite social media platform, with a link back to me here. Have an aloha day!